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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608592">I'm Sorry If</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher'>cher</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Other</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:00:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>707</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608592</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon knows it's watching him again.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Michael/Jonathan Sims</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>151</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Chocolate Box - Round 5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I'm Sorry If</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/forsyte/gifts">forsyte</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The statement Jon wants is missing. When he first took it from the subject he thought it was a lot of paranoid nonsense, but now he thinks it could have been one of the Stranger's and he wants to read over it again. The misfiling is frustrating. The tickling between the shoulder blades is unsettling. </p><p>It's watching him again. Jon is starting to be able to tell, his power growing in what might be a natural progression or might just been sheer mortal panic. Or. Scratch the 'mortal' part, Jon might be a lot of things but people who get to call themselves mortal probably don't spontaneously heal from their monstrous injuries. Their injuries from monsters. Something like that. </p><p>The point, and Jon used to be better at making one, is that the Distortion is watching him, right this second, and he can feel the unsettling buzz of it on his skin. It's different to the feeling of the Beholding watching, more immediate, more threatening. He tries to put it from his mind. There's nothing he can do to make it go away; he's tried shouting at it, ignoring it, reasoning with it—that was a truly spectacular failure—and on at least one exhausted evening, pleading with it. It does as it pleases and the best Jon can hope for is that it doesn't decide to actually come out of its corridor dimension today. It doesn't, not always. </p><p>Maybe watching Jon is as close as it can get to catching up on its television. He certainly can't work out what it's so fascinated with, and trying to get it to tell him is an exercise in futility. It says a lot of things, Michael does, but working out what it means—if it means anything at all—is beyond him. </p><p>Jon mutters angrily to himself about the lost statement, tries to distract himself. But trying to forget about the monster watching you from every closet ever built—and the new ones you didn't know were there—is impossible. </p><p>_ </p><p>The next morning, Michael is in his office. All the eye-watering edges of it, dizzying. There is nothing like the Distortion to make Jon realise how much he likes being able to judge mass and form in his space, until he can't. Is there room for the two of them in his office? His eyes aren't sure, but historically the answer has been yes, so in Jon goes, monster and all. </p><p>"Michael," he says warily, because he has no way to anticipate what it's going to do today. The scar on his shoulder throbs, the one left behind when it stabbed him with its horrible, fascinating hand. </p><p>Michael smiles, or at least Jon thinks it does. It's awful. "Hello, Archivist," it says, its voice like a twisted path in the air. "I brought you this."</p><p>It uncurls one of its hands, which hadn't seemed particularly <em>wrong </em>today and yet had apparently been holding an entire person. Jon swallows. </p><p>"Ah. Hello. Are you all right?"</p><p>The man stares at him, his incredulity apparently overriding his terror for a moment. </p><p>"...no. I suppose not. Are you injured at all? No? Perhaps you'd like to take a seat?"</p><p>Jon ushers the man to his desk and glares at Michael until it takes itself off to the corner of the office, giggling the way it does. It's impossible to ignore the sound but it is possible, eventually, to learn to tolerate it without his skin feeling like it will crawl away without him. Jon is sometimes more horrified by the familiarity he's building with Michael than he is by Michael itself. </p><p>He takes a breath, tries to focus on the man Michael has brought him, bundled up for him like a cat bringing him a dead mouse. Oh God. He can't be thinking of this poor man as a gift. But how else to understand what Michael means? Does it mean anything? He tries again, looks at the man. </p><p>He's the statement giver, the one from the possibly-the-Stranger statement Jon couldn't find earlier. </p><p>He turns, looks at Michael. </p><p>It smiles again, or something like it. "I brought you this," it says again. "I saw you needed it. Do you like it?"</p>
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